Advertising ranks amongst the LEAST respected professions and most people strongly dislike being advertised to because they feel manipulated.

Eliminating stock-photos, fancy graphics, and high-brow design elements can help your cause and make you feel more ma & pa trustworthy than a corporate-titan in training.

“We trust things more when they look like they were done for the love of it rather than the sheer commercial value of it.” – Robert Scoble

3) Accessibility – Build for technology two cycles back . . .

HTML5, the latest CSS tricks, and your kickass integrated flash design have NO PLACE in a website designed to sell when older technologies can do a comparable job.

One of our clients receives in excess of 15,000 visitors a day to their website – about 70% of that is coming from various versions of Internet Explorer.

Yet nearly 27% are using outdated versions despite wide availability.

So unless you enjoy building 10 versions of your site stick with simple and build for compatibility with browsers, OS, screen resolutions, color palettes, etc.

4. Flexibility – Don’t paint yourself into a corner . . .

What do PlentyofFish, CraigsList, and DrudgeReport have in common?

They scaled to huge numbers of visitors with tiny staffs – keeping your site flexible enough so the CEO can change the homepage content may not be aesthetically appealing, but it sure does beat a static beautiful website.

A website that’s easy to change, update, and experiment on is better than one that relies heavily on advanced CSS, Flash, images etc that you can’t change quickly.

5) Function – Get your users where they want to be as your priority . . .

When you’re running a commercial website just by virtue of having arrived, a user is a qualified visitor ready for you to close.

EDIT –My example above reflecting “ugly” vs. “pretty” tests had room for improvement, as pointed out by my friends over at Hacker News. A crisper example of true “ugly” working can be seen on Mr. Green‘s site.

That’s all folks . . .

We’ve battled designers and CMO’s day in and day out for nearly a decade but overwhelmingly following the 5-rules laid out above drive results that simply win.

35 thoughts on “Increase conversion rate by making your site ugly. . .”

I think this is actually decent advice if you’re content with remaining on the low end of a particular market. But you don’t have to intentionally make your site ugly, just don’t make it look too fancy. I think I get this.

Respectfully, while this novel approach may work for your firm, ‘making sites ugly’ as a competitive strategy is absurd.
Design affects credibility; beautiful-looking UI design is more functionally intuitive -more engaging -more trustworthy. Pure utilitarianism with no regard for aesthetic form, in the context of digital interactive design, undermines user-experience. May I suggest reading the Stanford University research on Web credibility ( http://credibility.stanford.edu/guidelines/index.html )
If these things didn’t matter Apple would have been out of business years ago.

Those are some really good points, and ones all web designers should keep in mind at all time.

But on the other hand, that kind of thinking can lead to crappy hypnotic marketing type websites. I think it all depends on your goals: if you want to make a quick buck those are some valid tips, but if your goal is to be the next Apple then you have to shoot higher, at the risk of losing a few users in the beginning.

This makes perfect sense. When I am looking for something online, I usually do a google search, open up a few websites in tabs, and click through them ctrl+F-ing for what I’m looking for. If I don’t find it (because it was in a flash element or whatever) I close the tab and move on. More searchable text! less shitty pictures!

Brian Massey’s webinar was excellent on improving conversions (I found this site through his Twitter). He also touched on making sites more straight forward. I have successfully specialized in creating luxury brands over the past 18 years. Ugly sites work despite themselves. If these sites were well branded and optimized you would see even more impressive results. Technology is not a substitute for marketing. What the conversation is really about is the difference between Advertising Art Directors who develop brands that sell versus Graphic Designers who develop passive brand looks. For some reason, design school curriculum never covers the art of selling. I have had the advantage of being an art director/copywriter first, and a graphic designer second. I do all 3 tasks well, but what I really bring to the table is big concept development which translates across a broad media platform. It’s really about brand messaging complimented by memorable design. Even if the design is brilliant on its own, you still need a fluid concept to create campaigns and build brand equity. I guess we make it look easy if you’re not in the industry, but if you’ve ever sat down and really tried to write a great headline or create a unique logo you understand how difficult the process can be. Initially when you try, the first realization is that everything has already been thought of a million times over. I really resent the SEO companies who pass themselves off as marketing firms. We have a lot of people out there with technical-know how and no creative chops. It’s easy for the good stuff to get lost.

After 18 years, I would hope everyone has earned the right to say “I do my job well.” Design is about thoughtful use of space or being a good host–anticipating needs of audience and surpassing expectation. Your site has a few basic problems: big blank space just below the headline–you force readers to hunt for content; links are taking up the space of entire homepage at the top; no incentives to subscribe; logo is buried. I could go on. Of course you think I’m being rude, but I’m trying to help you and illustrate why it is important to hire someone who is a brand specialist. I like where you’re going with the site–it simply is not professional.

Again, Zack is missing the point. Ugly sites that perform well would benefit from not being ugly. Better segmentation, typography and graphics would improve conversions on any website. Common sense, right? There’s no sense in blending in with your market–most websites are ugly. The sites referenced above offer industry leading content–Zack’s post is intellectually dishonest and a bit Orwellian.

Cheap design caters to cheap customers who, from the outset and by definition, don’t place much value on what you do, and they’re not fun to work with. Individuals and companies with a deeper understanding of the value of beautiful and intuitive/usable designs, search for designers who have the same understanding. They care more, and are willing to pay more.

Execellent. I find it ironic that my clients that ARE mom & pop operations are trying to redesign their website to have all the bells and whistles. All while they have 6 to 8 pages of poorly written copy that is generic advertising at best.

To each I say, love your simple website and start generating CONTENT. Let’s work together to develop a theme and tone for your blog.

Well now I’ll refer them to this blog so they can see that sometimes it’s better to be the little guy.

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